Released: 25/05/09

Elsewhere is all about subtlety and an insidious creeping into your thoughts over time and many listens; if you demand immediacy and crashing resonance from your music then possibly this might not be for you.

Occasionally there are exceptions to this rule. Opening track Underlying Lies is one of the most emphatic of the album, a haunting melody in the verses transmuting to an insistent chorus resplendent with strings and bitterness: “Spare me your bullshit” he sneers scornfully. Likewise, Fractured has a big rousing middle that rises cobra-like out of the dusty mesmeric of the album.

Songs such as Jagged Melody, Up On The Hill and Elsewhere are more representative of the record’s entirety however, where Matthews croons his unique umbra of vocals over quietly impressive melodies of acoustic guitars and delicate percussion. The tune of each song can be so entrancingly somnolent at first that they mask the progressive ascensions of musical layers in these songs, until, as they fade out, you realise upon the third listen, that something so ostensibly simple was in fact a far more complex beast.

Where Matthews excels is as a lyricist, intertwining mystical imagery into a landscape of loss and sepulchral thoughts. In the Elizabethan-tinged 12 Harps, a duet with Robert Plant, he invokes jewels and bats and tides in quick succession immersing the listener into his personal otherworld. “Feel for my soul in the bed now / I don’t feel any warmth,” he whispers upon closing track Nothing’s Quite Right Now, and one is left with an enduringly simple ache of love lost.

Give it some time and patience, and you have with Elsewhere a hushed and cherished album that might just speak directly to you at one or more points.

www.scottmatthewsmusic.co.uk

Patrick Cash